The foundation of many modern display technologies is premised upon the fact that the range of human-perceivable colors can be well represented by summing three or more appropriately chosen color primaries—usually Red, Green, and Blue (“RGB”). These primary colors can be added up in various ways to reproduce a broad range of different colors.
Certain display technologies supply the colors sequentially—for example, producing a red image followed by a green image followed by a blue image. This type of display technology is often called “color sequential”, “field sequential”, or “field-sequential color” (hereinafter collectively referred to as “color-sequential”). Color-sequential displays work because of persistence of vision. If the different colored images (fields) are presented quickly enough in sequence, the human eye will merge them into a full-color image. Popular examples of color-sequential displays include certain LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon) panels and DMD (digital mirror devices).
Conventional color-sequential display technologies suffer from the possibility of color-breakup because the different color primaries are presented at different times. If the observer's head or eye moves during the presentation of a desired image, the different fields will fall on different locations of the observer's retina, and there can be a perception that the fields are mis-registered. A common complaint when looking at field-sequential displays is that rainbows can be seen on the boundaries of bright white regions against dark backgrounds.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved approach to mitigate these and other artifacts of color-sequential displays.